That is Joe Kapp's assessment of himself. Quarterbacking, he says, is the natural refuge for the eager player too small to block, too slow to run. Yet no quarterback is better than his line, and here Kapp tells how the Vikings made him look great in the 1969 regular season

The bird dogs spot the bright young players first. Then come the scouts, the evaluators of baseball talent. The scouts used to be salesmen, wheedlers, con men, but the free-agent draft changed all that

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The way the Kansas City Royals play ball, they need special attention or at least some tender loving care. That's what they're getting from Muriel Kauffman, wife of team owner Ewing Kauffman. A member of the Royals' board of directors, she is also interior decorator of the dormitory and administration building of the team's baseball academy nearing completion in Sarasota, Fla. The bedrooms will have alternating color schemes of blue and white (the Royals' colors) and blue and gold. Mrs. Kauffman says she has "tried to keep the colors masculine and the furnishings sturdy" and has "put the best mattresses on the beds." The classrooms will have soft-green walls and soft-gold armchair desks, because, as Mrs. Kauffman explains, "educational psychologists have determined that soft colors are the best learning colors." Royals fans can only hope her color selections will chase the blues away.

Swinging Bo Belinsky and his wife, ex-Playmate Jo Collins, seem to be living the good life in Indiana. When Bo finishes pitching for the Indianapolis Indians, where he was sent from Cincinnati early in June, he hurries home to his wife and year-old daughter Stevhanie. Quite a change for the man who refers to his days with Mamie Van Doren as "a fun-type thing until certain people tried to get us married." Bo adds: "I get a lot of digs, but anyone who ribs me about being married to one of the most looked-at girls in the world is really eating his heart out. Everyone should have a Playmate for a wife."

The always mordant Brigid Brophy, British novelist and critic-at-large, recently loosed some sharp words on the subject of sport. Miss Brophy is "bored by all forms of racing where the only question is who will arrive first, and all forms of competition where all that counts is counting up the marks at the end." She feels "golf is for businessmen, because to get round in fewer strokes than your rival is like reducing your costs and thereby undercutting him." Her favorite spectator sport is tennis. "The fascination tennis holds for an intellectual like me, whose capacity for bodily exercise goes scarcely beyond waving an umbrella to hail a cab, lies in the openness of its psychological content," says Miss Brophy. "An exchange over the net can be a passage of brilliant dramatic dialogue." Her attitude toward active participation in sports is another matter. The biting Brophy "detests the whole business and finds them all intensely boring." She insists, "It's rather like the arts—you've got to do it well or not at all."

More British words on sport from Eldon Griffiths, Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Local Government—who gained practice as a phrasemaker at TIME, LIFE, Newsweek and the Washington Post. "It is a good thing that man should be pushed to run faster, climb higher, jump farther," Mr. Griffiths declares, for "man is at his best when giving all he has, pushing his talent to the limit, producing that extra gasp. Playing games gives satisfaction to the majority, to the ordinary chap, to the less-than-brilliant sportsman. By all means cheer the champion, but let that admiration be the spur which lifts the remainder of us, middle-aged as well as young, out of our armchairs onto the playing fields." On the practical, rather than the pontifical, side Mr. Griffiths feels that "it is a legitimate task of government to help provide its citizens—albeit at their own expense through taxation—with facilities for widespread recreation and enjoyment." So, ordinary chaps—get your shillings together, arise from your armchairs and enjoy.

It is the height of the Paris tourist season, and one of its many attractions is Claude Terrail, the 6'4" owner of the Tour d'Argent restaurant who tools around on a 1920s motorbike wearing a hairnet instead of a helmet. A sports enthusiast since youth—he was once the French junior tennis champion—Terrail is a devotee of polo. Indeed, he fields his own team, the Maillots d'Argent, for games in the Bois de Boulogne. "A marvelous sport!" he exclaims, but "the trouble is that I'm left-handed and it's against the rules to play with one's left hand. It's a big handicap having to play with the right hand." Like having to pay through the nose at the Tour d'Argent?

If old baseball fans are big record buyers, Van Lingle Mango may make the top 10. Written by someone named David Frishberg for an album mysteriously called Oklahoma Toad, Van Lingle Mango consists entirely of the names of 35 old baseball players recited rhythmically, and punctuated from time to time with the title name of Van Lingle Mango, the hot-tempered Brooklyn Dodger pitcher out of Pageland, S.C. A few of the others: Howie Pollet, Johnny Vandermeer, Ferris Fain, Frankie Crosetti, Johnny Sain, Frenchy Bordagaray, Max Lanier, Eddie Waitkus, Phil Cavarretta, Whitey Kurowski, Hal Trosky, Early Wynn, George McQuinn, Johnny Pesky, Thornton Lee and Sigmund Jakucki. Oh where have you gone Cletus El-wood (Boots) Poffenberger?

"Hi, I'm Russ Peterson, and I'd like to ask you to help keep the beaches clean," says the Governor of Delaware as he roams the sand at Whiskey Beach. Peterson's personal fight against litter has brought tremendous results. The Delaware beaches are nearly spotless now since a messy Memorial Day. The governor is also peeved by drivers who "airmail" trash out of cars, and with them he takes a hard line. When motorists recently dropped a bag of garbage next to his car, he got out and "airmailed" it right back at them through the window. "I told them I was the governor of this state and I didn't care for their particular method of getting rid of garbage," Peterson reveals. "They said, 'Yes-sir, yessir.' "

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything